The Empire Builder snakes through Montana's Rockies, past evergreen forests and mountaintops that glisten with snow even in the warm months. It's a glorious morning in my transcontinental railway journey. Amtrak's intercity express had departed Portland, Ore., at 4:45 p.m. the previous day bound for Chicago. My destination was Penn Station in New York City, four calendar days and 3,216 miles distant.

A new storm headed into Washington state Wednesday as the region shivered in the aftermath of unusually heavy rain and snow that caused traffic nightmares and power outages. The stormy weather has been linked to two deaths in Washington, and another snowstorm in Colorado has been blamed for at least five deaths.

Two years after Mount St. Helens began its low-key eruption, a process that has extruded tons of rock into the crater left by the volcano's deadly 1980 blast, scientists say the mountain seems to be slowing down.